Reading list

Signals

What the analysts, researchers and practitioners worth following have just published, and why we think it is worth your time. Everything links out to the original. We publish the headline and our own line on it, never the piece itself.

  1. The Beautiful Mess

    John Cutler
    5 September 2026

    Am I the Only Weirdo in This Company?

    On why organisations look far more unanimous than they are, because behaviour converges long before belief does. If you have ever run a change programme that met no resistance and then failed anyway, this is the mechanism.

    cutlefish.substack.com

  2. Josh Bersin

    Josh Bersin
    2 September 2026

    US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output

    Reads the new Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for 2025 to 2035 and finds labour shortages rather than the displacement everyone is planning for. Useful as a sanity check on workforce plans built on the opposite assumption.

    joshbersin.com

  3. One Useful Thing

    Ethan Mollick
    31 August 2026

    Agency and Agents

    Mollick is the most reliable writer on what AI systems can actually be delegated to at work, as distinct from what they are sold as doing. Relevant to anyone evaluating an AI coaching or development tool this quarter.

    oneusefulthing.org

  4. Josh Bersin

    Josh Bersin
    27 August 2026

    The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies

    Assembles the long-run figures behind something most retention programmes treat as a mood: median S&P 500 company tenure has gone from twelve or thirteen years in the 1970s to four or five, the average American worker now sees 2.5 layoffs in a career, and trust in company leadership sits at 19 percent. Bersin reads it as mutual abandonment rather than an employee problem, which is a more uncomfortable framing than the usual one.

    joshbersin.com

  5. Josh Bersin

    Josh Bersin
    13 August 2026

    Despite Massive AI Investments, HR Jobs Are Booming. Why?

    The counter-intuitive labour market read, from someone who has been calling this market for thirty years. Worth holding next to any vendor pitch that starts from the premise that AI is about to hollow out the people function.

    joshbersin.com